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Different Types of Website Visitors

It is important to understand the different visitor
types and ensure your site caters to each one. This ensures you get the
best result from each type.

In order to improve your website's performance, you need to
understand the factors that influence the chance of a sale. This area of
study is called conversion mechanics. Conversion mechanics is a branch
of applied statistical analysis that looks at the different types of
"visits" and the factors that influence a person to make a purchase or
not. Not all visits are alike. Different types of visits are affected
differently by a common set of factors, which means different types of
visitors are affected in different ways by the same influences. This
article explains the different types of visits and the factors that
affect their chance of conversion.

Different types of visits

There are three types of visits:

1. Browsing visits are made by people who are
just surfing the site for "infotainment." Such visitors are more heavily
influenced by elements of design than other people because any purchase
they make will be an impulse purchase.

2. Research visits are made by people who do not
intend to purchase during the current visit; they just want product
information. Some will have the intention of buying later and are doing
research in order to make a more informed decision. These are called
focused research visitors. These visitors are typically beginning or
engaged in a repeat visit cycle and may be actively comparing sites.
They are very focused on finding product information and are almost
impervious to the effect of design features. The only design feature
that can really affect them is navigation that makes it difficult for
them to find the information they want.

People looking at car insurance sites for several months before
their renewal is due are a typical example. They will purchase when
their renewal is due, but not now. By contrast, background research
visitors are simply interested in the product area in general and are
seeking to increase their overall knowledge. Hobbyists are a typical
example. While they also show repeat visit patterns, the time between
visits is likely to be much greater than visitors doing research in
order to buy. These people are closer to browsing visitors in terms of
the factors that will influence them to purchase, as any purchase they
make will be an impulse buy.

3. Focused visits are made by people who intend
to make a purchase on this visit. On most sites, the majority of these
people will be repeat visitors coming directly to the site. After them,
the next largest group will be people who found the site via a targeted
search in a search engine. The cost and nature of the product directly
influences the proportions of these two. The more expensive a product
is, and the greater the impact it will have on the purchaser's life, the
more likely the purchaser is to be a repeat visitor. People rarely take
out loans on their first visit to a site because of the cost and length
of the commitment. This person is likely to have visited the site
before as a research visitor.

Most visitors start out as browsers or researchers, only becoming
focused visitors on their final purchase visit. They then lapse back to
browser or researcher until their next purchase, unless you lose them
for good.

Understanding what makes people buy online

Conversion mechanics is about mathematically understanding the
factors that are involved when someone converts and the relationship
between those factors. These factors are the forces that influence the
visitor's decision. Some of them increase the chance of a purchase,
while others decrease it. There are four main factors involved in any
visitor's decision to convert:

The baseline purchase probability is
the initial chance that the visitor will purchase on any given visit.
This is closely connected with the type of visit. Someone who is just
browsing is much less likely to purchase than someone who has come to
the store with the specific intention of purchasing. Baseline purchase
probability is also affected by the cost of the product and shipping
costs. Dollar-for-dollar shipping costs have a greater negative impact
than the product's price. Previous purchase experiences also affect the
baseline purchase probability.

The visit effect represents the
impact visiting the site has on the decision to purchase. Positive visit
effects, such as clear images, increase the chance of a sale, while
negative visit effects, such as poor navigation, decrease the chance of a
sale. Not only does each visit have its own effect, multiple visits
create an accumulated effect.

The purchase effect refers to the
experience the shopper had after previous purchases. Purchasing effects
can have a positive or negative impact. For example, failing to deliver
the product severely reduces the chance of a repeat purchase, whereas
swift delivery increases the chance.

The purchase threshold represents the
customer's resistance to purchasing. Once the combined conversion
effects listed above exceed the purchase threshold, the visitor decides
to purchase.

These factors can influence each other in different ways. Which
factors are most important -- and their relative weights -- change
according to the type of visit. The impact of these effects also changes
over time, so it is important to understand not just how these factors
are working now, but what they have been in the past and, most important
of all, what trends indicate about the future.

The baseline purchase probability for focused visits will be high
relative to the visit effect. The purchasing effect is likely to be low
if negative, and high if positive.

If someone has had a negative purchasing experience from your
site, they are simply less likely to visit the site again at all. If
they do make a focused visit to your site after a negative purchase
experience, that experience wasn't very important to them, and the
importance of that negative experience is relatively low.

By contrast, research visitors will have low baseline purchase
probabilities and purchase effects, but the visit effect will be high.
Browsing visitors have similarly low baseline purchase probabilities,
while the visit effect can vary strongly from visit to visit and thus
result in some occasional impulse buying.

The most important effect is that of the visit. The visit effect
directly reflects the quality of the website and is the area where you
have the greatest influence. You need to know what percentage of your
sales occurred on the first visit versus what percentage of sales comes
from repeat visitors. Most sites find that the majority of their sales
go to repeat visitors. Amazon, for example, does not break even on a new
customer until the third purchase.

You also need to understand the cumulative effect of repeat
visits. Does the chance of buying increase or decrease the more visits
someone makes to your site?

As people become familiar with the site, the effect it has on them
will change. For example, design features are more important for
initial visits than subsequent ones because the visitor becomes familiar
with them. On the other hand, this familiarity means that elements that
do not fit the familiar pattern have a greater effect in later visits
than in early ones.

When it comes to the cumulative effect of visits, not all visits
are equal. Some visits will have a greater or lesser effect than others.
This is influenced by a number of factors, such as the nature of the
visit (browsing visits have less impact than others), the time since the
last visit, total visits already made, the effect of the last visit and
the accumulated visit effect.

A very important and often overlooked component of the visit effect is known as the utility of connection.
Utility of connection looks at the relationship between the content
being served and the connection this content is traveling through.
Primarily this is about how long it took to render a functional page
(which has enough to use) and then the complete page.

Utility of connection is actually decreasing for a large portion
of the web's users. This is because there is a general assumption in
design circles that everyone has broadband. In actual fact, in the U.S.
(and most of Europe), around 40 percent of internet users are still on
dial-up.

The chance of getting further sales out of an existing
customer is most strongly influenced by how well you delivered the
product to them. Problems with delivery do not automatically have a
negative effect. A delivery problem can lead to a positive effect if
your customer service response is above average. Sorting out a
customer's problems in a manner that shows you care and that the
customer is important to you can have a more positive effect than simply
delivering smoothly.

The purchase effect accumulates with multiple purchases. In other
words, customers form an overall impression based on their accumulated
experience of multiple purchases. The more purchases they make, the less
effect each individual purchase has.

It is important to understand the relative size of the
purchase threshold and the factors of which it is composed. Companies
often underestimate the resistance potential customers have. The main
purpose of the site's content is to address and overcome the factors
that make up the purchasing threshold. Successful sites are created by a
process of consciously identifying and addressing each element of the
visitor's purchase threshold.

The factors making up the purchase threshold are not just
intellectual but also emotional. People require information, but they
also require motivation. No matter how much product information you
provide them with, the actual decision to purchase is always an
emotional one.

It is important to understand the different visitor types and
ensure your site caters to each one. You need to understand how the
different conversion factors are combining on your site for each of the
visit types. The math used to put these considerations together can be
as simple or as complex as you like, but you need to do the work.

9
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